Another Reminder of Educators Who Fail To Embrace Modern Tools

How long can you ignore tools that will engage students?

Just looking

via Seth's Blog by Seth Godin on 12/22/10

The problem with browsers is that they rarely buy anything.

The prospect who walks up to the salesperson and says, "I'm looking for a pinstripe suit in size 38" is a lot more likely to walk out with a suit than the one who mutters, "No thanks, just looking."

Which is relevant to your quest for a new product or business or job or mate or project worth working on...

If you're still looking around, making sure you understand all your options, getting your bearings or making sure you're well informed, you're most probably browsing.

You missed the first, second and third waves of the internet. You missed a hundred great jobs and forty great husbands. You missed the deadline for that course and the window for this program.

Quit looking and go buy something already.

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Once again Godin has me thinking about school - Is the answer this simple?

This post reminds me of the whole selling job that we are doing with so many of our stakeholders regarding embracing technology integration in order to access all of the new tools for engaging students that are available to us. In my school specifically, we are going to be a 1:1 environment next year and we sometimes get caught up in important but complicated discussions about how we are going to do certain things.

Maybe I am wrong, but I feel as long as people begin to understand why we need to make this change and they begin to believe the why then we will have the momentum we need to answer all of the hows that will pop up along the way. The why is the easy part and the how is the complicated part.

"The answer is simple"

via Seth's Blog by Seth Godin on 12/11/10

...is always more effective a response than, "well, it's complicated."

One challenge analysts face is that their answers are often a lot more complicated than the simplistic (and wrong) fables that are peddled by those that would mislead and deceive. Same thing is true for many non-profits doing important work.

We're not going to have a lot of luck persuading masses of semi-interested people to seek out and embrace complicated answers, but we can take two steps to lead to better information exchange:

1. Take complicated overall answers and make them simple steps instead. Teach complexity over time, simply.

2. Teach a few people, the committed, to embrace the idea of complexity. That's what a great college education does, for example. That's what makes someone a statesman instead of a demagogue. Embracing complexity is a scarce trait, worth acquiring. But until your customers/voters/employees do, I think the first strategy is essential.

You can't sell complicated to someone who came to you to buy simple.

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On Godin Today: We Need Schools That Encourage This

My favorite line in this post is where Godin talks about a blogger who "takes her readers somewhere they will be glad to go..."
I think this also needs to be the primary objective in our schools. We need to have environments that take learners where they will be glad to go!

Where's your platform?

via Seth's Blog by Seth Godin on 12/8/10

That needs to be the goal when you seek out a job.

Bob Dylan earned the right to make records, and instead of using it to create ever more commercial versions of his old stuff, he used it as a platform to do art.

A brilliant programmer finds a job in a small company and instead of seeing it as a grind, churning out what's asked, he uses it as a platform to hone his skills and to ship code that changes everything.

A waiter uses his job serving patrons as a platform for engagement, for building a reputation and for learning how to delight.

A blogger starts measuring pageviews and ends up racing the bottom with nothing but scintillating gossip and pandering. Or, perhaps, she decides to use the blog as a platform to take herself and her readers somewhere they will be glad to go...

There's no rigid line between a job and art. Instead, there's an opportunity. Both you and your boss get to decide if your job is a platform or just a set of tasks.

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The Open Road - Do You See A Connection To Your PLN?

While, I am not emphasizing the competition that Godin does in this post. I do feel that this post reminded me about the power of my PLN. My PLN, through all of the amazing things that these incredible educators are doing, keeps me motivated and inspired to do more.

The open road

via Seth's Blog by Seth Godin on 12/7/10

I was driving on a very dangerous two-lane highway in India. More than eight hours of death-defying horror...

Our driver aggressively tailgated whatever car, truck or horse was in front of us, and then passed as soon as he was able (and sometimes when he wasn't).

What amazed me, though, was what he did during those rare times when there wasn't a car in front of us, just open road.

He didn't speed up. In fact, it seemed as though he slowed down.

He was comfortable with the competitive nature of passing (I may not be fast, but I'm faster than you), and he was petrified of the open road and the act of choosing his own speed.

Of course, we do the same thing with our career or our businesses. Most of us need competition to tell us how fast to go.

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Why Does School Have To Be So Boring?

I knew the day would come where simply playing the game of school would become tedious to Timothy, my 12-year old son. I could tell last year when his conversations about school were always centered on  his grades and never about any exciting insights into things he was learning about. This past week he asked, "Why does school have to be so boring?" 

While I know the short answer is that school doesn't have to be boring, there is really no quick solution here.  As I re-read my post last year about Tim's making the high honor roll, I know that it is time for me to start utilizing my knowledge of constructing a PLN to supplement Tim's education so that he can learn based on his passions.  It will be much easier than putting pressure on his school to do this. Am I wrong? 

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Give Me This Day My Daily Blog Post

It seems, I have been blogging less lately. There are a number of reasons that I can think of when I reflect on this fact.  The biggest reason for me is actually due to the amazing posts that I continue to read by the members of my PLN.  Just the Connected Principals Blog alone leaves my head-spinning due to the quality of the posts that my colleagues are writing.

Sometimes my competitive nature comes out and I feel like I need to write something amazingly insightful. Unfortunately, this coincides with my biggest bouts of blogger's block.  So I finally had a moment of clarity last night and remembered that the reflective nature of blogging is what I really enjoy. Hopefully, once in a while my thoughts will be useful to others as well. 

So here I go...

... I commit to blog daily, even if it is just a few sentences.  

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This Reminds Me Of My PLN - How About You?

I have been enjoying What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelley. So much of this book makes me stop and think...

Here is a quote from the book reminded of the great members of my PLN as well as those people who have been resistant to the collaborative power of social media. 

"Sharing results is of marginal benefits if you are chiefly seeking a better tool for today. Therefore, the benefits of science are neither apparent nor immediate for individuals. Science requires a certain density of leisured population willing to share and support failures and thrive."

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My Children Are Not Being Engaged In School - Are Yours?

So I know my children have teachers who are passionate about students, but my frustration is that they are not passionate about student engagement. How can this be so?  and more importantly,  how can we help passionate educators care more deeply about bringing out their students' passions?

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Just because he's angry

« Won't get fooled again | Blog Home | Marketing Halloween »

Just because he's angry

... doesn't mean he's right.

... or even well-informed.

Something to think about when dealing with a customer, a leader or even a neighbor.

It's easy to assume that vivid emotions spring from the truth. I'm not so sure. They often come from fear and confusion and well-told stories.

Posted by Seth Godin on October 30, 2010 | Permalink

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How Should I Feel?

I love some of the things that are in my school's future, but I have trouble spending too much time feeling a sense of satisfaction because I know in many instances that we are lagging on a trail that has been embarked upon by others years earlier. However, I also know that there are other schools that are light years behind our school in moving forward on some of the same initiatives. 

So then I worry about being guilty of not taking time to celebrate some of our accomplishments. On the other hand, I feel awkward celebrating "the bus leaving on time" as one of my colleagues describes this phenomenon of praising things that we just should have been doing a lot earlier.

Do you know what I mean? How should I feel? 

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Would These 10 Commandments Apply To Teaching As Well?

Just finished reading 10 Commandments of Suck-Free Speaking from Jonathan Fields' Blog.  I am thinking that this would be a pretty good starting point for a list of commandments for suck-free teaching. 

10 Commandments of Suck-Free Speaking

1. Give a damn – If you don’t they’ll know…and you’ll suck.

2. Tell great stories – Craft ones that engage, entertain, educate and inspire.

3. Practice…A Lot – With rare exception, speakers are made, not born.

4. Co-create the experience – Empower your audience to own and guide it.

5. Bullets kill – Use slides only to expand and illuminate, never as a crutch

6. Simplify – You don’t need to prove you’re smarter, they already know you’re not.

7. Be generous – It’s about them, not you.

8. Create a script – Then throw it away, the magic is in the process, not the product

9. Lean into the fear – It means it matters to you, that’s a good thing.

10. Focus and flit - Speak to one person at a time, then another, then another.

Bonus Commandment – Don’t be a butthead. Fly your freak flag, but not for affect and never out of arrogance or anger.

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Interesting Question On Becoming An "Expert Teacher"

There is an interesting question being posed on the Edutopia site in the Walden University Group re: Do Teachers Over Time Become Expert Teachers?

Personally, I worry about the use of the term expert. It could just be narrow thinking on my part, but is expert a term that someone would reach and there would be no further to go? I think it is important to encourage a mindset where we are never quite there.

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